Summarize Daily Reports Weekly and Send Them Out

Summarize Daily Reports Weekly and Send Them Out

With the current size of the pilot, it was no longer feasible for Martin to keep everyone personally informed. At the same time, Martin's need to have the latest information was even more pressing. He asked everyone to send him daily reports. These reports contained information on current deployments, plus any issues and resolutions . If someone had seen the daily reports, he/she would have thought the wheels had come off. With the complete picture of what was going on, Martin knew that what he was reading daily was the right information. The information was too detailed to send to senior executives. Martin instead summarized and sent out the data to the senior executives weekly. Martin then joined their conference call the following week to provide additional feedback and answer any outstanding questions.

Jason needed to keep his manager informed. With the limited time he had, he emailed quick updates to his manager. With little context available around some of his emails, there was generally a gloomy feel to the whole project. His updates always seemed to indicate they were falling behind and leaving some machines half installed because of unresolved issues.

The Methodology

With the larger scale of the project and the greater number of people involved, it is not practical to share knowledge and information in an ad hoc way. With the larger scale, there are always new problems to overcome and lessons to be learned everyday. This type of information needs to be collected, consolidated, and reported . There can be tactical daily reports that track day-to-day activities and issues. These reports should get summarized at the end of each week. The summarized report should be sent to all the stakeholders, the project management group, and to the senior executive group . This way, the executives can read the report if they choose and will feel included during the pilot. This feeling of inclusion is important as the larger final decision of moving ahead with deployment is made. If the senior executives have felt included, it will be easier for them to support whatever recommendation the stakeholders come back with.